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Yeah just got this in the mail. Beautiful art, amazing high concept ideas, so much stuff which I hope to see flashed out. Honestly, it's refreshing to read something so out there and fresh from Marvel Comics.

SHIELD #1I am reviewing the uncolored variant since my shop didn't manage to get any colored issues in. This was a pretty damn fun read, lots of cool ideas... number ones are so hard to review since it is mostly set up but this thing hooked me with Da Vinci being a bad ass. I kinda wish this wasn't a Marvel book and I got to read a book solely about him without all the Marvel continuity but it still works greatly here. I am still not sure I know what the deal is with Leonid and his powers or whatever, it was kinda hard to distinguish a lot of stuff due to the lack of color but the scope of this comic seems pretty vast and I am really looking forward to the next issue. The art looked great but I typically don't care for black and white so my art score would probably be higher if I had some crayons.
STORY - 9

Any comic book that begins with the title, "The Unholy Resurrection of Leonardo da Vinci" is automatically off to a good start in my eyes.

This is a great beginning to what looks like an interesting series. Although much of the backstory of the protagonist, Leonid, is left up in the air by the end of the issue, the secret history of S.H.I.E.L.D. that Jonathan Hickman casually tosses into the issue is enough to make up for it. I have always been attracted to the idea that ancient cultures held secrets that we have not been able to unlock, and seeing a second century Chinese emperor fighting a Celestial, or Galileo taking on Galactus is quite a treat. The story is not much more than an introductory piece, but it is a successful one: I am dying to read the next issue!

The art is equally fantastic. Dustin Weaver creates wonderfully detailed images that bring to life the concepts that Hickman has created. Christina Strain's wisely chose her color palettes for each scene, using bolder, darker colors to accentuate the architecture of the secret city beneath Rome, and using more subdued colors to illustrate the flashbacks to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s history.

This is the most entertaining single issue of a comic I have read in a while, and certainly one of the most visually stunning. I cannot recommend it highly enough.